Tag: WordPress (Page 106 of 220)

Articles, tips, and resources for WordPress-based development.

Building Quality into WordPress Projects: A Practical Example

February 25, 2016 / Tom

Building quality into WordPress projects is a topic that sounds a little subjective or maybe even a bit esoteric.

To be honest, I think it certainly helps to have a level of experience in general software development as well as with the way WordPress does things, but it’s something that anyone can learn.

I’d go as far as to say that many people who care about building quality into WordPress projects are people who are consistently learning new ways to go about doing so.

Anyway, in a recent article for Envato, I cover exactly this.

Quality Code and Bloat in WordPress Projects

February 24, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Quality Code and Bloat are two topics that I see a lot of developers either discussing and/or mentioning on the landing pages of their project pages.

I think the conversation around quality code is something that should always be happening. We should always be aiming to get better at what we’re doing, there is always someone who can help us, and there is always someone we can help.

It’s not that I think bloat is something we should accept, nor is it something that I think we should settle for in our projects (or those to which we contribute for that matter). But does it have as an objective definition as quality code?

It’s important to define clearly quality code and bloat as it relates to you, your team, and the solutions you’re providing for others. And I think this is true if you’re working for yourself, in a shop, for an agency, or even as a hobby and you’re building solutions for other people.

Loading WordPress Tries to Download a File

February 23, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few clients contact me saying that their website won’t load. Instead, their current installation of WordPress tries to download a file whenever they access their site.

This doesn’t matter if you try to access wp-login.php, /wp-admin, or any of the usual directories. Further, if you look at the permissions on each of the files, everything looks in order.

WordPress File Permission Scheme

On top of that, there are no suspicious (read: malicious) files in place that would be redirecting a user’s request or anything like that.

So what gives?

Scaling WordPress (And Doing It Right)

February 19, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Scaling WordPress is a hot topic among developers.

For some, it’s just something you do through a variety of tools and practices that you learn over time. For others who are involved with development in other languages, it’s a fool’s errand.

As far as I’m concerned, WordPress does scale though it takes some strategies to get it to work (such as a proper use of transients, caching, etc.). But there are varying degrees of what it means “to scale,” right?

That is, depending on how many users you have, the type of content you’re serving, the level of demand your site has based on the interaction of the visitors, and some other factors will all contribute to whether or not your site is going to scale.

But if we’re working on a larger project and we know it’s going to need to scale, how do we know we’re doing everything correctly?

Writing Beautiful Code in WordPress

February 18, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Writing beautiful code in WordPress is a topic that any programmer, at some point in his or her career, is going to consider. I say this if for no other reason because it’s something that’s almost a right of passage for any programmer.

When it comes to writing code, there are some who get into it because they have a real love for solving problems using computers. Others get into it for others reasons. Maybe it’s because someone urged them to do so, maybe it’s because technology is going to continue to be ever present in our lives.

If you’re of the former, then I think your appreciation for code isn’t as high as for those who get into it for a different reason. I’m not trying to generalize, but I’m speaking from observation.

So anyway, when it comes to writing beautiful code in WordPress, how do we even go about doing that?

Building Quality into WordPress Projects: A Practical Example

Quality Code and Bloat in WordPress Projects

Loading WordPress Tries to Download a File

Scaling WordPress (And Doing It Right)

Writing Beautiful Code in WordPress

Current Projects